Carmaker blames Brexit for cuts to working hours in Germany

Carmaker Opel said Friday it is cutting working hours at its two plants in Germany as Brexit stokes uncertainty in one of its biggest export markets, the U.K.

“We can confirm that there will be short-time work in the plants in Rüsselsheim and Eisenach during the course of this year,” Opel said in a statement.

“The Brexit situation is an issue for everybody who does business in and with the U.K. at the moment and we already announced last month that there will be an impact on our European financial performance if the value of the pound remains at its current level for the rest of the year,” the carmaker said.

The strength of sales of the Corsa and Insignia models in the U.K. would determine the extent of the working-time restrictions, Opel said.

Cuts to working hours does not necessarily mean job losses. Under German law, companies that enter a period of economic distress can apply to have the government compensate part of the wages of an employee.

George

Filippo

Dear Opel,
Maybe if you and your friends in the industrial companies association wouldn’t have forced your government to impose an idiot policy of domestic labour devaluation that drove the continent in endless recession to allow you to sell some more cheap car and your country to score an illegal foreign trade surplus for eight years straight….there hadn’t been any Brexit. Do you mind if we doubt the problem can be solved by the ones that caused it?

Posted on 8/19/16 | 9:14 PM CET

Tom Cullem

Well, then, maybe Frau Merkel should have been a tad more flexible when Cameron begged her and Brussels for a package that would really have offered migrant caps immediately and sent the vote the other way.

Brussels played a game of chicken with the fed-up UK electorate who don’t live in townhomes in Primrose Hill or Hampstead and don’t go out first thing in the morning for lattes; Brussels lost.

They should have listened.

Posted on 8/19/16 | 11:04 PM CET

Latimer Alder

A predictable consequence of the EU’s typically intransigent refusal to contemplate any change to its rules..not even to accommodate one of its biggest paymasters on a matter of national importance

UK has decided not to belong to this rule-bound, hide-bound failing club..and I think we’ll be the first of many who defect to freedom and self-determination.

Posted on 8/20/16 | 8:10 AM CET

FierEuropeen

@Tom Cullem
If I were you I were not laughing.
What do you think will be the next Opel plant to be closed? Poland, Spain or the UK?
Very easy to know.